One of Those Nights
by Hokey Roamer Esquire
Summary: It wasn't always so quiet here, kid. We used to see all kinds of things. One night, even the Devil himself showed up to party, and things were so bad that we were grateful for the company.


So there I was, not sure if I was gonna shit myself or kick a wall in. See, it was gonna be one of those nights. Demons all over the streets again, and not a damn thing most of us could do about it.

You'd really think with all the hell unsealing and demon invading and shit, we'd have been taking things seriously, but the leadership was either blind or part of the problem most of the time. Still is in most places, from what I hear.

At least our commissioner would look the other way in the hypothetical scenario of us raiding a personal stash of heavier ordnance, if you follow. Not that they do a damn thing against the nastier demons, and forget about the things some call devils, but they kill the trash just fine. Getting in touch with freelancers has always been a coin toss depending on who you call and when, so even today you probably won't ever see the nice purpose-built weapons and magic, unless you're lucky enough that one happens to be in town and wants to make your life easier.

But damn if it wasn't a godsend the last time it happened. Or not, maybe. Some people say there is no god, but I'm getting side-tracked. Point is, things could be a lot worse here, but they're not, and it's all thanks to that cocky bastard.

So again, there I was, deciding whether to shit myself or kick a wall in. It wasn't my first bad night, and it wasn't my last either, but it was definitely the worst. A whole hive popped out of the ground, and the city was literally crawling with the ugly bastard children of centipedes and rats. We never even figured out how the hell it happened, but I get the feeling the idiot responsible didn't make it out alive.

Myself, Officer Lincoln, god rest him, a couple mobsters who I would have cuffed any other day, and a dozen or so unarmed civilians had barricaded ourselves in the upper floor of a shop and hoped for the best. Turns out neither side of the law is that big on becoming prey. Half of the civvies were schoolchildren, shepherded around by a nun, and the other half were people right off the street who'd gotten lucky.

The gangsters and us officers were hidden at the windows, killing any lesser demons that got too close. The nun and a couple other adults were trying to keep the kids comfortable, but there's only so much you can say or do in that situation. Most of the others were content to sit and wait to die. I could see it in everyone's eyes, in the stains and tears in their clothes, that they'd carry this night with them forever if they lived through it.

And let me tell you, kid, that matter was pretty touch and go. Of course I'm still sitting here, telling you about it, but at the time I never would have thought I could. We were lucky at first, that the nest that popped up out of the ground was mostly sending out feelers. Scouts. It was more interested at first in the ones that made it back to report huge amounts of food, so for a while all we had to do was make sure none of the vermin who sniffed us out made it back.

But as the night drew on and the demons got a stronger foothold, they started sending the big and nasty bastards, like an ant nest's soldiers, out along the cold trails, trying to figure out why some scouts hadn't been back yet. They took more time and ammo to kill, and something about their corpses was like a beacon for even more. The inevitable happened so fast that we barely noticed it beforehand.

Amid the shrieking of the beasts, and their tearing at the barricades, we ran out of ammo. The vermin were strong enough that we only really had time to look at each other, to look at the people we'd failed as the fact dawned on us, before the building itself started coming apart under their force.

But just as the first one was breaking in, everyone in that shop felt the damnedest thing. It was like... Like Hope leaving Pandora's box to combat the evils unleashed. Like a god of the same abyss that we were about to get well acquainted with had come to smite these demons.

Everyone buckled under the sheer force of that presence, and the vermin froze. Looking back, they seemed terrified. They crawled off of the ruined building and all stared up the street at a white-haired man in a long red coat, posturing and puffing up like they were trying to scare off their natural predator. I could make out the handle of what I assumed was a big-ass sword poking out over his right shoulder as he postured right back. I couldn't hear from where I watched, but judging from his motions, he went eeny meeny miny moe.

And then he threw himself right into the thick of them, so fast I didn't see him moving until he stopped to fire two guns. One white, and one black, they looked like pretty ordinary M1911 pistols as far as I could tell, but no ordinary guns could do what they did. This guy was whirling and shooting at every demon around him, and his guns were firing like automatics with bottomless magazines, and shredding through the vermin like paper with every shot.

The remaining vermin recovered from the surprise attack, and some of them tried to dog pile the man, but he vanished again and came down sword first from on high after they landed. Those ones he cut right through like one great big guillotine, and I noticed as he landed that the hilt of his big-ass sword was made to look like a skeleton.

At that point, I doubted that this guy was human, but what happened next sealed the deal. The last few vermin, either too slow or too cowardly to join the dog pile, had surrounded him on all sides and rushed at him. I can only describe his answer to that attack as the most terrifyingly violent dance I've ever seen. He twisted past and through their flailing attacks, hacked plenty of them apart with flourishing swings, and occasionally impaled one on his sword before ripping it out and moving on. At one point the laws of physics went on holiday when he used his sword like a golf club to smack one of them into the air, jumped up after it, and managed to dice it apart before either of them hit the ground. The man landed carrying his sword over his right shoulder like it was a baseball bat.

And after all that bullshit, this guy looked right up into the window at me. At us. He was smirking like some jackass about to show off, and he gave a cheeky salute before he ran deeper into town. The crazy bastard was headed right towards the nest, at a pace no normal human could follow.

I looked back and found that pretty much everyone else had taken posts at my window or one of the others. Nobody could really process what they just saw. Not us officers, not the hardened mobsters, and definitely not the civilians. That poor nun even looked to be having a crisis of faith right there, and I could hardly blame her.

Not a single demon bothered us for the rest of the night, and as dawn came, people started creeping out of their hiding places to find the disaster over. Our motley group definitely wasn't the only one to encounter that man in the red coat, and it quickly became apparent that he'd killed almost the whole hive by himself and saved the whole damned town.

Of course, he didn't stick around to rebuild the whole damned town, or even accept anyone's thanks. He vanished like smoke in the wind, but a man or god or devil of his talents probably had some other town to save from the brink of destruction. And another after that, and another after that, for as long as he can go.

With how quiet it's been these last few years, it wouldn't surprise me if he's found his way down into Hell and made a game of killing demons, chasing some kind of high score record.


End file.
